ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with illustrating how Slavenka Drakulić’s 1999 novel, S. A Novel About the Balkans (also published under the title As If I Am Not There), can be read as a version of testimony, a certain form of witnessing of the atrocities perpetrated against Bosniak women during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, particularly with regards to the lack of a truth commission’s establishment. As will be illustrated, Drakulić’s novel provides insight into what Bosniak women were forced to suffer at the hands of Serbian forces, and is a form of testimony for these women, some of whom the author interviewed years before completing her novel. In addition, this chapter examines the role that gender politics have to play in the examination of crimes against humanity. Drakulić’s novel attempts to present a certain kind of survivor narrative which was lacking from the trials held at The Hague.
